o work. Pinecoffin being a Civilian and wishing
to do things thoroughly, began with an essay on the Primitive Pig,
the Mythology of the Pig, and the Dravidian Pig. Nafferton filed that
information--twenty-seven foolscap sheets--and wanted to know about the
distribution of the Pig in the Punjab, and how it stood the Plains in
the hot weather. From this point onwards, remember that I am giving you
only the barest outlines of the affair--the guy-ropes, as it were, of
the web that Nafferton spun round Pinecoffin.

Pinecoffin made a colored Pig-population map, and collected observations
on the comparative longevity of the Pig (a) in the sub-montane tracts
of the Himalayas, and (b) in the Rechna Doab. Nafferton filed that, and
asked what sort of people looked after Pig. This started an ethnological
excursus on swineherds, and drew from Pinecoffin long tables showing
the proportion per thousand of the caste in the Derajat. Nafferton filed
that bundle, and explained that the figures which he wanted referred to
the Cis-Sutlej states, where he understood that Pigs were very fine
and large, and where he proposed to start a Piggery. By this time,
Government had quite forgotten their instructions to Mr. Pinecoffin.
They were like the gentlemen, in Keats' poem, who turned well-oiled
wheels to skin other people. But Pinecoffin was just entering into the
spirit of the Pig-hunt, as Nafferton well knew he would do. He had a
fair amount of work of his own to clear away; but he sat up of nights
reducing Pig to five places of decimals for the honor of his Service. He
was not going to appear ignorant of so easy a subject as Pig.

Then Government sent him on special duty to Kohat, to "inquire into"
the big-seven-foot, iron-shod spades of that District. People had been
killing each other with those peaceful tools; and Government wished
to know "whether a modified form of agricultural implement could
not, tentatively and as a temporary measure, be introduced among the
agricultural population without needlessly or unduly exasperating the
existing religious sentiments of the peasantry."

Between those spades and Nafferton's Pig, Pinecoffin was rather heavily
burdened.

Nafferton now began to take up "(a) The food-supply of the indigenous
Pig, with a view to the improvement of its capacities as a flesh-former.
(b) The acclimatization of the exotic Pig, maintaining its distinctive
peculiarities." Pinecoffin replied exhaustively that the exotic P